'Sports Illustrated King' Selling His Collection for $2M
NEW JERSEY (1010 WINS) -- Meet Scott Smith -- the self-proclaimed "Sports Illustrated King."
Smith has over 10,000 original copies of Sports Illustrated editions and about 98 percent are signed by the cover star. And for just about $2 million this whole collection could be yours!
Steve Sandberg reports
The 44-year-old Pompton Plains resident started his labor of love as a kid. He says his father would take him to see the Rangers, Yankees and Mets play when he was 8-years-old and that's when he started his autograph-collecting hobby.
He started gathering the John Hancocks in notebooks at first and then in 1972 his grandmother gave him a subscription to Sports Illustrated magazine.
But it wasn't until 10 years later, when "The Great One" Wayne Gretzky was in town, did Smith start tracking down cover stars to get the magazines signed.
He's got Ben Hogan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team but still no Patrick Ewing.
"It's just been a brutal, brutal autograph," says Smith. "He's tough."
Smith estimates he has spent between $300,000 and $400,000 on travel expenses and purchasing autographed copies of the magazine with deceased cover stars going back to when Sports Illustrated was first published in 1954.
Smith says he's tracked down 'an old swimsuit model from 1968 in the French Polynesian Islands and an old Russian runner in Kazakhstan."
Smith's collection represents about 94 percent of the magazine's history.
The whole collection is for sale on e-Bay for $1,999,999 but individual copies of signed editions of Sports Illustrated and other memorabilia can also be found at sikingcollection.com.
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September is right around the corner, so to help ease those back to shool butterflies we invite you to check out the high school yearbook photos of some of your favorite stars before they were famous!
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Smith has over 10,000 original copies of Sports Illustrated editions and about 98 percent are signed by the cover star. And for just about $2 million this whole collection could be yours!
